Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

I know it's really cheesy-crass even-to compare my being dumped to the accident that killed Mia's family, but I can't help it. Because for me, at any rate, the aftermath felt exactly the same." Forman follows up her bestselling If I Stay with a story that is equally if not more powerful, set three years after the previous book and told from the perspective of Mia's former boyfriend, Adam. Mia and Adam haven't seen each other since she left for Juilliard, deserting him just months after emerging from her coma. Adam's anguish found an outlet in songwriting, and the resulting album, Collateral Damage, has become a sensation, turning Adam and his band into bona fide rock stars, though he's barely keeping it together. Mia's career as a cellist is taking off as well, and a chance meeting in New York City gives Mia and Adam the opportunity to exorcise the ghosts of their past. Having spent If I Stay in Mia's head, readers are, like Adam, thrust into a state of unknowing regarding Mia's thoughts and motivations. It's an extremely effective device, and one that makes this reunion all the more heartrending. Ages 14-up. (Apr.)

School Library Journal (Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2011)

Gr 9 Up-Three years after the tragic accident that killed the family of his former girlfriend, Mia Hall, the now-famous rock star Adam Wilde finds himself at New York City's Carnegie Hall for Mia's breakout cello concert. Convinced that merely hearing her play will be enough to satisfy his curiosity, Adam hides in the audience but is stunned when she asks him to come backstage after the show. Their awkward reunion sparks a night of painful reminiscing, heartbreaking closure, and hopeful discoveries. Using the voice of Adam, Forman continues the gripping narrative started in If I Stay (Dutton, 2009). After months of rehab from the car accident, Mia leaves Oregon for the east coast to attend the prestigious Juilliard School. Adam remains on the west coast to pursue his own rising musical career as the lead in his band. Mysteriously Mia cuts off all contact with him. Simultaneously freed and abandoned, Adam plunges into a depression, which also fuels the writing that launches his band to stardom. This novel is best suited to readers familiar with the first book. However, Forman convincingly establishes the relationship with flashbacks and Adam's current angst. Though not as poignant as its predecessor, this book has compelling characters and a romance so deliciously fated that readers will be willing to suspend believability and embrace the growing mood of a fairy tale. Fans of the exceptional first novel won't be able to put this one down. Lynn Rashid, Marriotts Ridge High School, Marriottsville, MD

Kirkus Reviews

In this compelling sequel to If I Stay (2009), Forman fast forwards three years in the lives of Mia and Adam, two budding musicians. They had been lovers, bound by an intimate and painful past that included the accidental death of Mia's family in an automobile accident. Whereas the prior title focused on Mia and her decision to remain alive as her body lay in a hospital between life and death, this book focuses on Adam, now an angst-ridden rock star. This installment reintroduces the pair as virtual strangers who have not interacted since Mia left for college three years prior and cut off communication with Adam. Unsurprisingly the power of music reunites the couple in a chance meeting at Carnegie Hall, where Mia, now a world-renowned cellist, takes center stage. Their reunion sets off a fast-paced, one-night tour of New York City, who in which Mia introduces Adam to her favorite haunts and new reality. Throughout the night, they both struggle to make sense of their feelings and to find closure, all revealed in Adam's agonized present-tense narration. Although their story is compressed into 24 hours, both characters spring to life, and their pain-filled back story and current realities provide depth and will hold readers fast. (Fiction. YA)

Horn Book (Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2011)

In this sequel to If I Stay, cellist Mia is making her Carnegie Hall debut while Adam--still consumed with love for Mia--is a paparazzi-hounded rock star. Fate brings the two together in New York City; tension mounts and sparks fly. Forman's angst-ridden narrative offers the appeal of a sensitive rock star whose only hope for salvation is true love.

ALA Booklist (Fri Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2011)

This companion to Forman's New York Times best-seller, If I Stay (2009), picks up three years after Oregon teen Mia survived the car accident that killed her parents and brother. Compacted once again into a 24-hour period of seismic emotional shifts, this time the story is narrated by Mia's former boyfriend, Adam. Still haunted by the bewildering dissolution of their relationship, Adam, now a punk-rock star, stumbles across a concert in which Mia, a rising cellist, will perform solo. His spontaneous ticket purchase begins their awkward, charged reunion, and in a sleepless night spent roaming New York City, they talk, argue, and gradually recapture the profound, enduring bonds between them. As in If I Stay, Forman tells an emotionally wrenching story that believably captures the mature depth and intensity possible in teenage love as well as the infinite ways that grief of all kinds permeates daily life, from the wormholes of memory that spin out from small moments to the unconscious ways that past pain can influence present decisions. Sure to please the first book's legions of fans.